For almost five years, Legendary Women, Inc. has tried to stay non-political and even-handed. We had legitimate reasons for doing so. We were trying to get a 501c3 designation and part of qualifying for that type of status and potential funding was a duty to stay more neutral in tone and not take on massive amounts of advocacy. I don’t think it was a secret where most of our staff were leaning, but things have changed since last Tuesday.

For the next two weeks, Legendary Women, Inc. is raising money primarily for Casa Ruby, D.C., a community center that helps LGBT people in D.C., especially those who are geender non-conforming. They offer food, a place to stay, and even job training and computer labs for one of the most at-risk and needing communities in the country. So, please, if you have less than fifteen dollars to spare, then we have a t-shirt for you. For more information you can see our link to Bonfire with an explanational video as well!

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AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps is a professional studio artist and avid gamer residing in Maryland. In the past four years she has been a featured artist in a number of Midwestern art shows and her abstract impressionist work hangs in several galleries across the United States. She is the creative force behind Black Arrow Workshop, an art and design studio that, among other things, does pro bono graphic design work and marketing plans for non-profit organizations.

We are looking for writers who can create stories either monthly or every two weeks on a variety of topics. We take feminist theory thoughts and op-eds on current events in the news that affect all types of women. We also feature profiles of local women or charity groups that serve women and media reviews or recaps of popular shows on TV. Bloggers will submit work via email and the pieces must be at least 1,000 words long. This is a volunteer position for resume building.

Morgan Barker is a William and Mary Graduate who does technical writing by day and authors novels and articles by night. She is a farm girl at heart who loves writing about food issues, feminism, and pop culture (or some combination of the those). In her spare time, she refinishes furniture, designs clothing, and attempts to pick tunes on the banjo.

Agatha Aramayo is a George Mason University Alumni with a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Video Studies. Currently working in product placement, she is a public relations event coordinator that connects brands and businesses with major motion picture and television studios. She is also a filmmaker and an actress, currently in preproduction for her first web series. In her free time she enjoys trendy fitness classes, traveling, and spending time outdoors with her Yorkie.

This year we had dozens of entries from close to ten different countries. We were excited to also have some amazing judges, including Carolyn West, Maureen Seaton, Amanda Rudd, Jennifer S. Atwater, and Dr. Stephanie Selvick. We had some stiff competition and were able to award "A Matriline," "Immunity," and "J.J. Jones" with the third, second, and grand prizes.

We're proud to present our 2015 Literary Contest Winner with Ms. Samantha Dauer and her piece "J. J. Jones." Thanks to everyone for participating and check back here soon for a new contest opportunity!

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Hey is this the barista who left her phone # and “Call me” on the napkin w/my croissant?

It was the wrong time to kiss her, but I did it anyway. There on the beach, Lenore lay beneath me in the sand, where we were both soaked from the oncoming waves. Her lips were so slippery that I could hardly keep hold of them, clumsy and biting, and our dresses had ridden up so high around our waists that dirt was scraping our backs and thighs.

Since April of 2015, we've also been hosting two types of twitter chats. The first, co-hosted often with the lovely women of The Bitch Pack, works to highlight films made by women and with women-centered or focused stories. Our innaugural watch was The Babadook by first time director, Jennifer Kent. In May, we watched A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which was written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour.

While we were able to previously attend Awesome Con 2014 as press, it was not until 2015 that we were able to host a panel and charity table. We allied ourselves with Ramona's Way, a D.C.-based non-profit that specializes in offering counseling and crisis hotline services to women who are survivors of domestic abuse and also struggle with substance addiction in their families.

As conceived by our staff writer and Awards Chair, Megan Hussey, the Lucindas started in 2015 as a social media-based alternative to the Oscars. We believe that not only do women in all areas of the movie industry need to be more widely recognized for their work but, also, that the spirit of competition undercuts the artistic value of their contributions. Our followers were encouraged to submit names of directors, writers, actresses, stunt women and others who distinguished themselves in the year in film in 2014.

We truly believe that every woman deserves to be legendary.

In everything we do, whether blogging, reviewing, partnering with charities, boosting the signal for worthy organizations, shining a spotlight on women achieving amazing things, or encouraging new talent with our creative contests, we are trying to build a better world for women and girls.

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Our third annual literary contest has started! submit it to our email contests@legendarywomen.org So what are you waiting for? Don't you want to be legendary too? To find out more, check our revised rules here.

During our first lit contest, we gathered an amazing collection of stories from six different countries and decided upon three great winners in "No Name," "Mona," and our grand prize winner, "From Her Tears Came the Sky." Now that we're up and running again, we want to hold our next writing contest and try a different theme. Who's the next person to gain entrance into our Winners' Circle? Is it you?

Our staffer, Megan Hussey, has a brilliant article calling forth for a new type of award for awards season. The Legendaries seek to promote positivity and recognition for a variety of women in the film industry. We've got our own nominations for women who dinstinguished themselves in film in 2014, but we would love for you all to be a part of it too.

Everyone knows classic actress Mary Pickford as America’s sweetheart. Few realize that Pickford was also a director, a producer and a screenwriter.

And, few people today know that the first female film director — Alice Guy-Blache — directed one of the first narrative fiction films way back in 1896. Or that is was female and out lesbian film director Dorothy Arzner, who in all likelihood invented the boom mic, and who taught the directing craft to Francis Ford Coppola.

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Megan Hussey is a feminist erotica author and journalist awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from LINCS (Family Support Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Task Force) and Sunrise Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Center for her newspaper coverage of these issues. She has written paranormal-based fantasy stories for a number of publishers and for companies that include Playgirl and Good Vibrati

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We're Posting Our Literary Contest (2012) Winners!

Thanks everyone for immense patience during the relaunch process and the contest announcements. We received almost fifty stories from around the world and from them we have three finalist that we really think show what it means to be a strong female character. You can find the first story up at Medium now. Also, look for information starting in September 2014 about our second contest!

Legendary Women is a journalistic site and charity seeking to promote positive images of women in the media. We celebrate our favorite fictional heroines from books and the silver screen and also highlight real world women role models and the charities they run and support.

Legendary Women, Inc. hosted its first ever contest to promote the creation of positive media representations of women. In this case, we held a literary contest in which readers submitted a short story of up to five thousand words that featured a strong female protagonist. We received almost fifty entries from over five countries. We thank both Random Acts.Org and The Bitch Pack for helping promote our event as well as for helping with the final judging of our finalists.

We teamed up with Random Acts.Org in order to get people to donate used paperback books and school texts to The Minnesota's Women's Prison Book Project. Despite a hectic fall with Super Storm Sandy interfering with some of our giving, we were able to send over fifty books to the WPBP. Not bad for a first time out!

In May, our board members, including Morgan Glennon, Carolyn West, and Margaret Bates, attended the Wizard World Convention in Philadelphia. There, they again teamed up with Moving Creations, Inc. to raise money for their cause. We were able to beat our goals and raise even more than 2011. We also had a great time enjoying the fan groups, spreading awareness about both LW, Inc. and Moving Creations' missions, and interviewing individuals like Kristy Swanson of the original Buffy film.

I'm not ashamed of it. I'm a grown woman who might be mildly obsessed with a computer game marketed to preteens. I might consider it kind of juvenile, but it's Nancy Drew. So I can tell myself that this is no ordinary game. This is all part of a proud tradition. I always have and always will support Nancy Drew.

There was some drama surrounding whether long-time regulars A.J. Cook and Kirsten Vangsness would be returning to Criminal Minds before the current season after leveraging their contracts for higher pay (read: ALMOST equal to the male actors on the show). But it makes me happy no one that I met in fandom, male or female, saw any issue with them demanding pay at least approaching their male counterparts. Their fight was met with overwhelming support once more fans understood exactly why they were renegotiating.

Welcome to Legendary Women! We are an organization founded to counteract the negative representation of women in the media, as well as to empower and promote women in their everyday lives and endeavors. Legendary Women focuses on influencing the representation of women in media as well as the world at large. Learn more about our mission here.

As a corollary to our First Annual Literary Contest, we're having a drive until November 30, 2012 to get together books for the Women's Prison Book Project (WPBP), a non-profit based in Minnesota, which collects paperback books and workbooks as well as monetary donations to help ensure that the over 150, 000 women in the prison system have access to reading materials to improve their lives. Read on to learn how to help!

We all have a favorite heroine, a woman who kicks a serious amount of butt and inspires us to be better than we are. So far, Legendary Women, Inc. has celebrated the female characters who already exist. Now we, along with Random Acts, are asking our readers to create some of their own! You have until November 30, 2012 to enter our contest so please check out the rules below!

The flurry of news stories over the past year might give people the impression that the last stand for LGBTQ rights is the fight for marriage equality… and maybe where you buy your fried chicken. However, the mainstream battles for the LGBTQ community tend to lean towards the interests of middle class adults, not the other cultural or gender minorities of the group overall, and definitely not towards the needs of our youth. But while these youth have been largely forgotten by society, Golden Girls star and gay icon Bea Arthur did not forget them in her final years.

“Legendary Relationships” is a regular column which will examine relationship moments between women in popular media.

I’m in love, readers. I’m in love with Captain Marvel, both the character and the new run of the comic of the same name written by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel is tough, intelligent, proud, sarcastic, loving, cocky, and just a touch reckless. In short, she’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Pardon us for getting this up so late, but we've had a lot of people traveling this summer. Anyway, author Jennifer Armintrout, who blogged her opinions of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, sat down to speak with us about the negative messages for women in the novel and her critical thoughts overall on summer's most talked about book.

1) Can you give us some background on yourself and why you wanted to review this novel in particular?

Strong Female Protagonist follows the adventures of a young middle-class American with super-strength, invincibility and a crippling sense of social injustice. After just two issues SFP is gathering quite a following and why wouldn't it? With a badass superheroine beating up robots while trying to keep her grade up and pass her college courses at the local university, there's something for everyone.

Tumblr, twitter, Facebook, and various blogs have been exploding this week with reaction to the self-published novel Save the Pearls: Revealing Eden. The book, actually published in October of 2011, came to more general internet notice after Racebending.com published a scathing editorial here of the book's incendiary content and marketing campaign, which is based around white actors using blackface.

"The world is full of Exes, of Priors and Formers, people who can never quite live in the present," Jennifer Finney Boylan says in the first chapter of I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted. What is it, she wonders, that allows some people to move on while others remain stuck in the past? "Maybe… you do it by writing poems, by trying to tell your ridiculous and and incomprehensible story."

Twenty years ago (or 1992 to be more specific) Kristy Swanson gave life to the most iconic blonde vampire slayer of all time: Buffy Summers. Since then Buffy went on to a bigger life than anyone in the original film could have envisioned. The movie was turned into a television show that spanned seven seasons and lives on today in the hearts of dedicated fans.

On July 29th, 46 women will be taking center stage at Hollywood and Highland in Hollywood, CA to raise awareness and funds and help work toward a cure for childhood cancer. And how? By shaving their heads.

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Legendary Women, Inc. was fortunate enough to sit down with Yasmeen Hassan, the Global Director of Equality Now about the organization's 20th anniversary, their big movements, and their hopes and plans for the future.

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Kristine Sutherland is more than Buffy's mom. She's an actress who's graced big and small screens for over 25 years, from soaps to dramas and comedies, a photographer, a mother, and a very graceful and intelligent woman. We were so pleased to kick off our Motherhood Month by asking her a few things about her years on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, her life since, and how she feels about entertainment's responsibility to young girls...

As a girl with only one parent of the Dad variety, my ideas of motherhood were often shaped by what I saw on TV. As a kid, most of what I wanted to see on TV was animated and, though cartoons might give you some bad ideas of stepmotherhood, moms were fairly solid. They were loving, wise, often strict, but fair, with endearing quirks or flaws that often let us kids know not to take those grown-ups too seriously.

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Dr. Rambo of Campbell University has long been a scholar in the field of Buffy studies and works on the editing board of the popular online academic journal Slayage, devoted to furthering Buffy studies around the world. She talked with us about Buffy studies, great Buffy-speak quotes, and Cordelia Chase, Queen Bitch of Sunnydale.

1) Can you explain who you are and what your background is for our readers?

We move now onto what was once dubbed "The WB Series Finale" of Buffy. On her final year on the network that launched her, Buffy Summers faces her mother's death, what it means to be The Slayer, and gives the ultimate sacrifice for her sister.

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Today, after a bit of hiatus, we'll be looking at two seasons back to back. First we start off with a transitional year for Buffy and the Scooby Gang as some of them start UC Sunnydale, Giles becomes a "man of leisure," new love interests come in, and, of course, a new Big Bad in The Initiative.

Even with years off the air, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's is ripe for study and analysis. It's studied at the college and graduate level, very often cited as an example of a female forward show in published works, and its fans take it very seriously.

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Please come out and visit our table. We'll be at the Philadelphia Wizard World Conventionfrom May 31- June 3rd. I'd we're very excited to be working again with our friends at Moving Creations, Inc. and raising money at our table for a good cause. Oh, and here's a few of the people coming...

We were fortunate not only to have a prize given to us from Deborah Stanish of this compendium of Whedon fan essays but also to sit down with her to talk about her fandom experiences, what's good and bad about the Jossverse, and why there's always, despite its flaws, things to love about the universes of Joss Whedon.

1) Gotta ask, what exactly does the term "Whedonista" mean and how did you settle on it.

Christopher Golden is a critically acclaimed and bestselling author of a range of work from books to comics, including The Ghosts of Albion with Amber Benson (Tara on Buffy) and The Secret Journeys of Jack London. He has also written many Buffy and Angel novels and comics and is the co-author of the first Buffy novel, Halloween Rain with Nancy Holder.

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Today we explore the third season of Buffy. It's a year that found huge growth for the slayer. She and Angel eventually broke up, she graduated high school, got a new Watcher, and also encountered a reflection of her dark side with Faith Lehane, another slayer called after Kendra's death. So how did this season fare when compared to previous seasons on the feminist scale?

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The women of Duke University's class Women in the Public Sphere, as taught by Professor Rachel Seidman, created an unusual social media project. While they did post an actual poster explaining who needs feminism and why, the class also used social media in this campaign to bring awareness to a college campus about feminist issues. They're employing traditional methods and the new media of Facebook and Tumblr to spread the word from Duke to all over the world. Recently, two of those students, Ms. Sarah Kendrick and Ms.

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It's been a while, but we can finally announce the grand total for our charity drive. This was a great experience and we at Legendary Women, Inc. loved working with the Sweet Forum and could never have gotten this far without support from Lana and Chloe fans alike! So without further adieu...

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A couple months ago in my Women and Psychology column, I talked about the debate ongoing over the Lego Friends line marketed to girls and if toys needed to be divided so sharply between girls and boys. Currently, SPARK Summit and representatives from the Women's Media Center are going to be meeting tomorrow with Lego after their petition against the girl-themed "Lego Friends" line reached over 50, 000 signatures. More from them below!

LEGO BOARD TO MEET WITH GIRLS CAMPAIGNING AGAINST ‘SEXIST’ TOY LINE IN NYC

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If you’ve been watching television in the last 15 years, there’s a good chance Jane Espenson has written for your favorite show. She might even have written your favorite episode. This is especially true if you're a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Espenson was a writer and producer for much of the show's run.

Valerie Estelle Frankel has won a Dream Realm Award, an Indie Excellence Award, and a USA Book News National Best Book Award for her Harry Potter parodies. She is the author of five new and forthcoming books on pop culture: From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey in Myth and Legend, Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, Teaching with Harry Potter, Harry Potter: Still Recruiting, and Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey. She lives in Sunnyvale, California, which is apparently a real place.

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We sat down with Rebcake, one of the moderators of the fantas_magoria community on livejournal to talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, their legacy, and why even after almost a decade off the air, people love doing fanart and fanfiction for these programs.

1)What can you tell us about yourself and how you became interested in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series?

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The second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be the strongest arc of the show from the episode “Surprise” to the season finale in “Becoming, Part 2.” The loss of Angel’s soul and his transformation into Angelus is a fan favorite but also reveals a new strength in Buffy’s character.

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Nancy Holder is a New York Times Bestselling author and co-author of the first Buffy, The Vampire Slayer novel, Halloween Rain, with Christopher Golden. She recently took some time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions for Legendary Women for our Buffy-themed month.

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How would you like to show your Buffy pride with a totally cool shirt? If the answer is yes, click here for more information on how to enter Legendary Women's Buffy month t-shirt raffle. All it takes is some shameless Legendary Women promotion and a love for kicking ass. Mr. Pointy approved!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer defined a genre, a generation of television and subverted the "blonde in trouble" and "the final girl" horror tropes. This month, in addition to interviews and other pieces, we'll be looking at each season from a feminist perspective.

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A group of female film makers have come together to test this years' film scripts to see how many have relevant conversations among women. They've already worked to evaluate the films nominated for best picture and screenplay for the 2012 Oscars and found surprising (or maybe not so much considering the make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) results about how realistically women in film converse with each other.

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We had many entries on both our twitter and our facebook for the copy of the Anne Boleyn book. We're more than happy to announce our winner here as well as on twitter in order to get that book out as soon as possible! Also, check below for details of another give away for April!

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I adore The Hunger Games trilogy. I can't say enough good things about it and I can't recommend it enough to people. It's dark, yet uplifting, painstakingly detailed, poignant, and never overdone. So as the movie release neared, I was a bit apprehensive about three things: love, violence, and gravity. I didn't want manipulative, overdone romances between Katniss and Peeta or Gale. I didn't want "cool fights" that left people wowing because I don't want anyone amazed or gleeful at a kid's death. And I didn't want eye-porn glory shots that diminished the dignity of the story.

Walking around downtown Washington DC is like passing by a kaleidoscope of museums. For lifelong political lobbyist Joan Wages, however, one museum is missing – a museum celebrating the achievements of women and one that can stand toe-to-toe with all the rest in Washington. Since 1996 the National Women’s History Museum has worked to make that dream a reality.

With Women's History Month upon us, I definitely want to do my part to tout the unsung heroines of yore. And who is more unsung than the women of ancient history? Sadly, that is pretty depressing work as there were few places where women weren't kept like prisoners, traded like property for power or money, treated as no better than broodmares, or even condemned to die in infancy for the terrible crime of being born without a penis.

As an owner of a website dedicated to Queen Anne Boleyn, I receive countless emails from people every day telling me of their fascination with Anne Boleyn, their passion for her and her story, their appetite for new information on her. It's truly mind-boggling the way that this woman has found her way into millions of hearts all around the world, yet she has been dead for nearly 500 years and was executed for treason, adultery and incest.

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Thanks to Claire from The Anne Boleyn Files we have an exciting giveaway for all our Legendary Women readers! Click here for full instructions on how to win a SIGNED copy of Claire's book "The Anne Boleyn Collection" or a beautiful pewter bookmark. And all it takes is some shameless Legendary Women promotion!

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Barack Obama’s contribution to the global climate talks in December 2011 was a message in which he urged countries to preserve their forests much like Wangari Maathai had been doing since 1976 in Kenya.

Yup, the whole world was being urged to play catch-up to a woman who had a simple idea some 35 years previously in Kenya.

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We have had an amazing time these last couple months, working closely with the Sweet Clark and Lana forum in order to raise money for The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. Without further adieu, we are announcing our raffle winners!

First for the Lana Lang/Kristin Kreuk Raffle:

1) The winner of the 2x3 season two promotional poster is Esma Al-Kubeisy.

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In 2001, my older brother and I sat down to watch the pilot episode of a new show called “Smallville”. I was twelve years old and while I adored Superman as a kid, I didn’t expect this to be the beginning of what I now refer to as a heart-wrenching love affair with this series and its characters.

"I'm Chloe Sullivan, and I'm here to bring you the truth," said Allison Mack's intrepid girl reporter in the first installment of the "Chloe Chronicles". Mark Warshaw also wanted to bring television viewers something — more content. In the early aughts Warshaw was on the cutting edge of interactive content when he pitched the idea for Chloe Sullivan to visit an even smaller screen: the computer screen.

“Persistence--we do not give up,” is how Maggie Goldberg, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation(CDRF) described what their organization stands for, and how far they’ve come since their inception almost 30 years ago.

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Written by a convicted felon from prison and filmed on a shoestring budget, the story behind the making of director Christopher Petry’s “Marilyn” is almost as fascinating as the film itself. The movie tells the story of a bank robber on the run (Ryan Robbins) who takes a runaway woman (Allison Mack) under his wing. Her volatile personality and dreams of becoming a singer change him forever.

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Recently Legendary Women was lucky enough to speak with “Smallville” producer and director Christopher Petry by phone. Petry has worked on the CW’s superhero drama since its beginning, starting as a production assistant parking cars. By the end of the series ten years later, Petry was a producer and director with independent film work under his belt.While cooking up a delicious dinner for himself, Petry shared some inside dish about working on “Smallville” since the beginning and how the show created their own super heroine legacy in the form of one Chloe Sullivan.

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Big girls just don't have it easy on the big or small screen. While large men have had svelte, commercially attractive wives since Ralph Kramden, the reverse is rarely seen. Plus-sized women barely get to date.

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It's a brand new year, and everyone from scientists to your mom want you to remember that you're fat. The proliferation of commercials for weight loss products is truly dizzying. Even on the TV Guide channel, you're bombarded with claims of what these amazing diet smoothies can do if you use them to replace meals. In between holiday movies, you can learn about meals that can be shipped to your door. Ab machines! Gyms! And especially pills, pills, pills!

Norman Buckley knows about OMG moments. As the director of such scandalous teen fare as The CW’s “Gossip Girl” and ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars” Buckley’s been around the block when it comes to outrageous teen behavior. His newest outing could be something out of a “Gossip Girl” storyline, but it’s actually the very real story of a one girl brave enough to try and change the way people think.

Lego was originally built on the concept that the colorful blocks were made for girls and boys and would encourage shared play. A new Lego "Friends" line, designed specifically for girls, may change all that.

IBG, Inc. or Inspire, Believe, Give has accomplished an incredible amount over the last three years, including raising over $100,000 for various charities. Patricia Steffy, their head of event production, talked with us and gave not only background on this wonderful organization but also advice for other non-profits.

1) Can you tell us about the founding members and how they came together to form IBG, Inc.?

One of the best parts of watching Chloe Sullivan's journey through a decade of Smallville was catching her quips. Here's a list of favorites according to fans surveyed across the net.Chloe Sullivan's charm definitely started with her sarcasm. Not only was she the hard-bitten investigator of the group, she was also the one that offered a joke to balance out Clark's seriousness or Lex's always encroaching darkness. While the series itself got darker and lost many of its moments of levity, Chloe still remained able to crack a joke with the best of them.

They say there's nothing new under the sun. And there's no denying it. TV Tropes will tell you that. TV Tropes is a website that catalogs every pop culture cliche, every stock character, every overused plot device known to man. Don't ever go there! Or do. I can't stop you. But don't blame me when hours of your day have disappeared. All warnings aside, it's a fascinating place. There's a trope for everything.

This Australian girl has become a Youtube sensation by now for staring down the King of the Jungle, but we also applaud The Mary Sue.Com for highlighting how sexist the commentator’s opinions on the video were. Next time, maybe someone will just say “I’d have wet myself like a little kid."

A few days before this Christmas, the Disney Channel aired an episode of the show Shake It Up, in which a female character remarked to another that “I could just eat you up, well, if I ate.” A second mocking remark about eating disorders in the show So Random! was yanked from the line-up before airing.

Since 2006, fans of the show Smallville have raised over $ 7, 600 dollars for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. This year, Legendary Women, Inc. and Sweet are teaming up to hopefully bring that number to over $ 10,000 dollars and we want you to help us do it!

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The fact that Work It is both a terrible show and offensive to a host of groups is well known by now.

We were told this in no uncertain terms by critics when they first viewed it in the fall. We’ve been reminded of it now in every source from Entertainment Weekly to The Huffington Post. Hell, anyone unfortunate enough to see a promo on ABC knows that Work It was dead on arrival and, thankfully, ratings seem to reflect that.

In June 2011, our president, Carolyn West, and our Public Relations and Media Contact, Morgan Glennon, attended the Wizard World sponsored Philadelphia Comic Convention. They worked with Emily Nussdorfer to help raise over two hundred dollars for Moving Creations, Inc. a Philadelphia-based charity that helps mentor young girls through dance and the creation of art such as decorated masks. Legendary Women, Inc. hosted a contest for convention attendees to vote for their favorite comic book heroine by placing a dollar in a bin by a picture of their favorite character.

Every year, Ms. De Razzo's other charity, IBG, Inc. hosts the "All Things" event where The X-Files fans all over the globe raise money by watching the episode "All Things" and other Gillian Anderson-related movies and episodes. We formed the first online team with participants as far away from Scotland watching both that episode and the original The X-Files movie, The X-Files: Fight the Future.

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Until the movie bearing her name was released, I had no idea who Veronica Guerin was. The picture presented to me by the film was crafted by Hollywood and as much as it contains the truths of her life, it is filled with much more Hollywood propaganda then reality. In the end, though, it brings to light a legendary woman who used her voice as a journalist to highlight the drug problem in Dublin. She was assassinated a mere six years after beginning her career as a journalist, and only two years after beginning work with the Sunday Independent.

While Scully was delving into the unknown of extraterrestrial life, Patricia Kirby was delving into another terrifying unknown: the minds of serial killers.

Kirby was the tough-as-nails investigator that Jodie Foster’s character was mirrored after in the blockbuster film The Silence of the Lambs. Kirby told UK newspaper The Sun that she was both honored and embarrassed that author Thomas Harris based the character of Clarice Sterling on her in the 1988 novel that would eventually spawn its popular movie counterpart.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCCs) is the biggest annual event for the field of Composition and Rhetoric. This is the time when composition scholars meet up with old friends, collaborate with one another, take in new scholarship, and do some serious drinking.

This time, perhaps a hundred or so women, and a few devoted men, sit in the Marquis Ballroom before the Coalition meeting, discussing the workshops they’ve already attended at this year’s CCCCs. They are The Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition.

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Thalidomide has been called one of the biggest medical tragedies in modern times. In the late 1950s and early 1960s over 10,000 children were born world wide with shocking deformities caused by the drug. Of those 10,000 cases only 17 were in the United States. That number would have been much higher if not for the vigilance of Frances Oldham Kelsey.

I’m not quite sure what it is that makes an iconic literary character.There is no set guideline, no way to truly measure the greatness of one character over another. That being the case, after pondering the thought, I decided to ask a number of my friends who they would call their favorite fictional females. Their responses covered a wide span of genres and authors.

To each their own is a mantra to which anyone involved in media fandom really has to subscribe if they want to get along with others. I wasn’t all that jazzed about Juno when I saw it. I don’t get the appeal. However, Jennifer’s Body, by the same writer, blew my mind. If you ask a lot of people, Jennifer’s Body is about Megan Fox’s tits. I have to wonder if these people have actually watched the film.

While I understand that anyone from all over the world can read this, I also admit readily that my world view is shaped by where I’ve grown up.I come from the land of the “pursuit of happiness,” but the prevailing sentiment of the vaunted “American Dream” is now that you end up with a nuclear family consisting of “Two fat incomes plus a two-car garage plus two master-bathroom sinks plus two-point-something kids equals one happy family (Sandler, 2011 qtd. pp. 73).”

In psychology, when they tell you to study personality, they also tell you to just look to the OCEAN or use a CANOE. Apparently someone out there has a water fetish. These acronyms are both muttered by students at final exam time to help them remember the “Big Five” aspects of personality---openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticisim. Most of these are pretty obvious. An extravert loves to party down and enjoys being in crowds; they’re social. Conscientious people are thoughtful and detail oriented, a bit rigid.

In her book, Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture, Sherrie Inness noted the close tie in lineage between Dana Scully and her predecessor, Clarice Starling. Both are tough, driven FBI agents. Both are placed on undesirable assignments---the skeptical and logic-driven Scully paired with “Spooky” Mulder for what originally seemed like nothing more than paranoid conspiracy theories, and Clarice interviewing the most prolific cannibal in the country as no more than a trainee.

It's been a sad few years for soap opera fans. All My Children will go dark in September of this year as will One Life to Live just a few months later in January of 2012. And in 2009 and 2010 we saw the end of Guiding Light and As The World Turns. The soap opera fan base is a passionate one. Fans are running twitter, email, and letter writing campaigns in an effort to save their favorite shows.

Airbrushing is everywhere, like those ubiquitous bedbug commercials on New York 1. Like those commercials, it changes your perception of reality. When I stay with friends now, I'm always giving their sweetly proffered couches an appraising side glance. Sure, it looks bedbug free, but who knows? According to the commercials I see incessantly throughout the day, there is an epidemicthat I could fall prey to at any moment. A few months of watching bedbug commercials and I've managed to convince myself that they are everywhere, just waiting for their moment.

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When Dana Scully first appeared on our TV screens in the fall of 1993, she was a ground breaking character. Her intelligence and courage were equal to her male counterpart. She didn’t have to be saved every episode or cower in a man’s arms when confronted with a gruesome site. Maybe the most shocking of all, she could run in outfits other than halter-tops and hot pants.

In my day job, I’m working toward my doctorate in developmental psychology. Since blogging is brand new to me, I think that’s going to be my day job for a long time. My work, currently, focuses on helping children with autism by using computer programs, especially those with avatars. An avatar isn’t really all that much different than what James Cameron presented in the film of the same name. Okay, so it’s not always a big 10 foot tall smurf wannabe. That’s not necessarily the preference.

Verushka is a freelance writer, blogger, editor, proofreader and copyeditor in her own little corner of the world called Editing Everything. There she reviews books, apps and anything else of interest to freelancers like herself...and pretty much anyone else really. Throw in editing advice and interviews with authors and bookstores around the world, and you’ll get the general idea of the type of geek she is.

lwfield:

Legendary Women

firstname:

April

lastname:

Walsh

emailfield:

awalsh@legendarywomen.org

Media Coordinator and Public Relations; Blog Staff Writer/Contributor

April Walsh is a professional singer, working primarily in Laguna Beach, CA. In her spare time, she is active in several fandoms and forever hopes television reaches a place where no one has to argue for better representation of women. You can find her at her twitter as well as her tumblr pages.

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Philosophy

lwfield:

Legendary Women

firstname:

Morgan

lastname:

Glennon

emailfield:

mglennon@legendarywomen.org

othersite:

http://writingmorgan.tumblr.com/

Advisor to the Board

Morgan Glennon is a working journalist who researches and performs interviews with a variety of newsmakers. She is also a freelance writer specializing in television and entertainment coverage. Her writing can be found at her blog Morgan Writes. She believes that the portrayal of women in the media is important for guiding the dreams and careers paths of future generations of young women.

lwfield:

Legendary Women

firstname:

Elizabeth

lastname:

De Razzo

othersite:

http://www.ibginc.org/

Co-founder, Board Member Emeritus

ELIZABETH DE RAZZO is a native of Laredo, Texas, she always knew she wanted to be a performer from an early age. After moving to Los Angeles in her late teens, Elizabeth began pursuing her career in earnest, dividing her time between theater and the small screen. Elizabeth was able to incorporate her first love, singing, in her co-starring role as Estella in the stage production of Real Women Have Curves: The Musical.

lwfield:

Legendary Women

firstname:

Margaret

lastname:

Bates

emailfield:

mbates@legendarywomen.org

Co-Founder, President/Treasurer

Margaret Bates majored in developmental psychology at Duke University and then continued her studies toward a Ph.D. with an emphasis on autism intervention at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. After a hiatus from academia, she is currently completing her master's in I/O psychology at The University of Baltimore and is an aspiring author of urban fantasy fiction.

Say the name Tina Fey and you conjure up a barrage of famous cultural images: Mean Girls, 30 Rock, brownie husbands, “I can see Russia from my house”. Something that has always marked Tina Fey’s writing is the ability to tell stories about women that we don’t always hear in popular culture. Fey doesn’t shy away from portraying women not as saints or love interests, but as real people. And occasionally, gross people.

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